_melée_, and the victory belonged solely to the two swordsmen. The snake proved to be a very large rock snake (a species allied to the boa), and measured nearly fourteen feet in length; while the thickest part of his body was as large as a stout man’s thigh. W— and A— made an attempt to preserve the skin; but the numerous wounds, the heat and closeness of the weather, and the want of arsenical soap, rendered their efforts unavailing. * * * * * =SONNET.—PEACE.= Benign thy sacred influence, golden Peace! Even desert lands beneath thy magic sway Would smile once more. Fields, fruitful, now repay The reaper for his toil, by rich increase; War’s captive but beholds thee, and his chain, As by some charm, dissolves, to set him free; Homes, erewhile silent, desolate, by thee Made glad, with joyous notes resound again— Soft is the feeling thy calm visit spreads O’er every breast! Science and Art awake; Now Commerce open all her ports doth make, While Safety with her angel footsteps treads— Nor battlements nor walls shall cities know, When, like a mighty stream, thou over earth shalt flow. * * * * * =SOMETHING NEW ABOUT BYRON.= =BY AELDRIC.= Can aught that is new be said of Byron? Can aught that is new be written to sink him lower beneath the scorn of wisdom, in the ignominy of moral littleness; aught that is new, to lift him higher before the gaze of romance, within the fane of mystic and Satanic beauty: aught that is new, to evolve before the magisterial aspect of philosophy the tangled mass of passion, hate, sentiment and poetic conception, that so long has awed the semi-wise into ecstatic contemplation, and charmed the semi-foolish into vain, insipid emulation? Can any thing new that can tend to open to the view of the world Lord Byron’s utter earthliness be written, since all that has been denounced in holy horror from the pulpit; warned against from the paternal fire-side; lisped stealthily with the flush of maiden shame, or hymned in the Psalteria of poetasters, whose highest praise but evokes the wise man’s judgment in condemnation? The subject would appear exhausted; for few subjects, and no man, have elicited so much commentary, and of such divers kinds. No youthful aspirant after literary distinction essays his hand upon the world’s wide folio, but, in some moment of pleasurable pain, dips his pen into the horn of Byronic inspiration: there has been no critic, from the “Scotch Reviewers” down to our day, but has reduced to some fantastic analysis the sparkling effusions of the “English Bard.” Much, much has been written; yet to me it seems that concerning this extraordinary man something more need still be written. Never, I think,